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What keeps you from joining the next level of competition in your games?

These factors leave me with not enough time to invest in MMOs and raid start/end time conflicts (even though I work from home and believe me I tried to do it all, lol) and not enough energy and mental well-being to maintain highly adrenalized FPS slaughter sprees for extended periods of time.

Therefore to echo a lot of the replies here I need to relax more than I need to be competitive in my vidja games due to the above.

MMOs blur the line kind of because it is not relaxing or fun to get passed over for raids or whatever due to equipment and therefore it's hard not to be somewhat competitive to play them IMO. Which is a big part of why I have pretty well dumped them at this point in time.

FPS are relaxing in short bursts even when maintaining a high frag count since you can kind of just zone out on an adrenaline/fragging/hysterical paroxysm of giggling antics jag but then when you wake up three-four hours later and nothing is done around the house and you're starving, you feel bad and worse the longer jag you went on.

I don't have enough of either to get really really good at a game. I'm usually decent at anything I play except for RTS's, I'm pretty bad at those.

Shit, I didn't have enough time to commit to raiding in WoW. May have had something to do with the guilds I played with back in the day requiring obscene time commitments or gkick, so I didn't bother. In hindsight, not committing that time was one of the best decisions I ever made.

EDIT of GREAT importance: Competitive gamers are some of the worst people I've ever met in my life. Simply my experience. I'm sure there are great people out there, I just haven't met them.

You may say that the time commitment for attending a competition "isn't a lot more than what they might already be spending on the game," but you're missing the huge point that is the difference between time on your own terms, playing when you are free and feel like it, as opposed to planning ahead and attending a scheduled event and the other life things that might clash with that.

Travel time is also not game playing having fun time and thusly counts at least triple into any equation.

Point the first: A friend tried to introduce me to DoTA. Within minutes, I would have the most insane epitephs screamed at me for not knowing every meta-aspect of the game by heart. Needless to say, it took but one game to decide that I had better things to do, even though I probably would have enjoyed it perfectly well otherwise.

I know the DoTA community isn't exactly a shining example of a video game community, but still, community is a huge barrier to entry for people looking to enter the competitive scene.

Point the second: I think you're severely understimating the time commitment needed to be competitive. Sure you "can" get good playing only 2 hours a day, but, in a competitive environment, you're going to be up against people who have way more disposable time and practice on that single game, exclusively, for 5 hours a day. What is the point in investing the time and money into tournament play, when you know you simply don't have the time, or the desire to spend the time, to match the time commitement of the hardcore player?

Point the third: Pressure: Like it or not, someone who only has time to practice for 2 hours a day will be at a severe disadvantage against someone who can practice five hours a day. Knowing this, I choose not to limit myself to just one game, and resort to casual play, where I don't feel pressured to stick to one game and can, instead, freely float on to any game I feel like playing at a particular moment. When you're in the competitive scene, there's a sence of pressure that you MUST keep playing during any free time you have, or fall into obsolescence. That is not a fun feeling, it is stressful. I have enough stress in my day-to-day life, why would I choose to subject myself to stress from my hobby, which is supposed to relax me.

All that being said, I will say that I do get a rush when going up against a human opponent. Most recently, I was playing the latest UFC game on Xbox and tried my hand online. As expected, I got trounced most of the time, but, at one point, I went up against an opponent and we had a very, very close match. I pulled ahead the victor after a sweet submission, and let me tell you, I felt a palpable rush, which could easily become very addictive.

I'd love to get involved in the competitive, or hell even just social aspect of gaming. However due to work, wife, house and exercise constraints I get roughly two or three hours per week of video gaming done. Usually I'll spend this on a short single player game that I have hopes of getting through (Limbo at the moment, with a slice of Darksiders every now and then) because I feel happier if i've progressed in a game than sat online shooting people for two hours, that's just how I'm wired.

That said I picked up Red Dead Redemption on release, single player is way too long for me (I haven't even hit Mexico yet) but the odd time I've had a little extra free time in the evening I've been hopping online and playing with a friend of mine who's three hours away that I don't get to see much.

I tried to get in to Uncharted 2 and compete online, bought the game on release and even managed to get in about an hour a night every other night. Then other things demanded my attention and by the time I came back to the game the community had got really got, learnt every single inch of the map and I was slaughtered.

Oh, also, in the UK there are barely any video game competitions, not even locally. The most I can manage is to invite three friends round once every other week to indulge in some multiplayer at my place.

When I was younger a local sports store had an NHL 94 (Sega Genesis) competition, and I destroyed everyone. The games were set with a 7 goal mercy rule and a lot of my games were won 7-0.

Flash forward to now, when trying to play NHL 09 or 10 online, and I get wrecked on a regular basis. What's changed? Well for one thing, online gaming obviously adds a whole new level of competition (in quantity and quality).

Not to mention the fact that, when I was younger, I could afford1 or 2 games a year and I would play them to death, thus getting ridiculously good at them. Now my attention is spread over 5 consoles and a PC. I don't play anything enough to be considered awesome at it.

In short? I don't play any one game enough to be good enough at the competitive level (i.e. I suck). Also, I generally don't play the types of game that lend themselves to competetive play. FPS and RTS is really not my thing. And getting my ass kicked tends to suck the fun out of games to me. I love Gears of War, but I only ever bother playing horde online.

I think I could have been tourney-good at Smash Bros. if I'd really tried, but it started to seem like toboganning- You put all that effort into carting the damn thing up the hill, for a few seconds of fun sliding back down. This, combined the the suckage of my Wii online connectivity, resigned me to a year of enduring my little sister's custom levels, all of which consisted of bouncing endlessly between floor and ceiling spikes.

Also agree with whoever said design was more important to them than competition. If I had a gamer's report card, it would read "Does not play well with others". Except Death Summer! That guy seems like he'd be cool to hang out with in RL!

Like others here, I also enjoy dicking around. Tiers be damned. I can give good competition with inferior characters, but when I'm up against someone who does use the most broken piece of shit available and takes it to the next level, I get stomped.

One of my fondest online memories is Advance Wars By Web, which is an online simulator of said game. There's little to no barrier to pick up and play. You just choose a map or join games and take turns. It's a lot like online chess in so much you're given a set amount of days to finish a turn. No pressure. Not to boast, but I was pretty good at it. Tournaments were held and I simply could not beat the high tier COs (Grit, Hachi, Colin), since their strategy is based on spamming units. It's like turtling, but worse.

SSBM was an exception, as I was primarily a Marth/Falco/Fox player, and still couldn't keep up because I couldn't SHFFL to save my life. I could do it with Marth with some regularity, but Falco/Fox/C. Falcon were a nightmare to master with their fast falling speeds. Running and SHFFL Falco's down aerial, Fox's neutral B or C. Falcon's forward aerial were just impossible for me to do consistently. Don't get me started on wavedashing. Not that I was part of the competitive scene, but it showed in the few tournaments I did enter.

Being competitive in a game often means being exclusive. There are only so many leisure hours in a day, and the jump from 'fucking around' to 'not looking like an idiot' comes at the cost of many, many hours, hours that could be used on any of the other games that are worth playing.

I like being competitive, but dislike going all out. I don't want to confuse work with play. I instantly stop playing a game when I figure I'm not really enjoying anything. Additionally, the games I tend to like playing competitively the most tend to have a bit too much rock/paper/scissors going on in them for me to really care how things work out. I mention that mainly referring to being 1st-3rd in a WoW gladiator battlegroup -- the team and I stopped playing when we literally could map out game outcomes against the other top two teams in a rock/paper/scissors grid.

I love sc2, but it's too much work to be even mildly competitive, and anyways I really enjoy watching it more than playing it. I tried some scrims way back in the day in cs but they really weren't for me. Having a job that eats up more than a standard 40 hour week sometimes doesn't help the competitive gaming spirit.

I don't play games at the competitive levels because I already have enough commitments as it is, and I want to get rid of stress with my hobbies instead of building onto it. The level of commitment needed to change a hobby into a serious competitive endeavor is a huge barrier. I think this applies not just to games but to many other naturally competitive activities such as sports, billiards, chess, etc...

Take for instance basketball. I thoroughly enjoy playing basketball with friends and coworkers. It's a great way to blow off some steam and meet new people. When I changed companies, I found out we had a company team playing in a local league. Several of my coworkers, who I regularly played pickup games with, decided we should join the team. Once that happened, playing basketball was no longer about simply having fun with friends. It was no longer, "oh I have some free time today and the weather is great, let's play some ball." Now it became, "dang, I can't go out tonight and have a beer with so-and-so because we have practice tonight." That's when I realized, my passion wasn't for basketball or winning, but it was about hanging out with friends. My buddies felt the same way because after the season ended we all quit the team and went back to simply playing with each other whenever we felt like hanging out.

At the same time, if you really do have a passion and commitment to take a hobby to the next level, I think that's commendable.

I'd like to hear other opinions on this, but from reading this thread it also seems like there is a transience to playing video games at a competitive level because of improving technology.

If I learn to play darts, pool, or chess, I can maintain that level with minimal effort, and I know exactly what I need to do to improve. Twenty years from now, pool tables will still be the same shape, and there will be a pool hall in every town. Smash Bros. has lasted for a long time, but already the popularity is waning, and if you want to pick up a newer version, or a different game, or hell even learn a different character, you're taking a few steps back each time. You're not starting completely over b/c a lot of game skills transfer between games, but you can't go from competitive Smash Bros. to comp. Street Fighter without a major training phase.

Edit: Krapst, just saw what you wrote. That's a good point too, how you don't hang your hopes on it when there's not a prize on the line.

Dropping Loads on July 2010

Sceptre: Penny Arcade, where you get starcraft AND marriage advice.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.

It's not fun to me to enter tournaments where I have no chance of competing, and I don't have the time, talent, or desire to get good enough to not make entering a tournament a complete waste of my time.

The point I've tried to make is that a lot of people go to tournaments without any intention of winning, either in the long term or the short term. They don't have to place every time to make it worthwhile.

But if you have no interest in competition, or have other things to do, I understand that.

What I'm more interested in are the people who already spend a significant amount of time playing a game, but never invest the extra effort to play it competitively in some way.

. But since aim is such a big factor for fps, and natural talent is such an important part of aim,

I disagree with this. IMO most of the differences that people call "talent" when it comes to aim are the product of how people approached the problem when they first started. Most of my friends who are bad at FPSes just use terrible mental algorithms for moving the mouse - and I'm pretty sure they could be taught so that you would think they have "good" aim without it taking that long.

While that's possible, and there are tricks and methods around that can be learnt, a lot of it is still natural talent. At all levels of play there are people who just have better aim. It's the reflexive aim that usually falls into that category, because either you have it or you don't, and if you don't but you try to use it anyway you just end up missing even more.

But basic fps skills do transfer between most games, which makes it easier to learn the next after you've learnt a couple.

The point I've tried to make is that a lot of people go to tournaments without any intention of winning, either in the long term or the short term. They don't have to place every time to make it worthwhile.

This is what I understand the least. Why go into something of a competitive nature that you have no intention of winning, especially when they more often than not cost money to do?

Playing casual tournaments with friends is one thing, but shelling out serious money for a serious tournament where serious people will seriously kick you ass sounds like a waste of time to me.

The point I've tried to make is that a lot of people go to tournaments without any intention of winning, either in the long term or the short term. They don't have to place every time to make it worthwhile.

This is what I understand the least. Why go into something of a competitive nature that you have no intention of winning, especially when they more often than not cost money to do?

Playing casual tournaments with friends is one thing, but shelling out serious money for a serious tournament where serious people will seriously kick you ass sounds like a waste of time to me.

Mostly because the money isn't serious.

Your average tourney will max out at $15, and that's pretty extreme. Most are $5-10. Online tourneys are usually free until you get to the level where sponsored players are involved, and even then the entry fees are nominal.

Going to a tourney isn't just for competition, either. It's a social activity. After you've been to a few, and a couple of gatherings, then you'll know most of the other players. It's just spending an afternoon or evening with a bunch of people, hopefully friends, who all like the same game. Yes, the play is more competitive, but it's not a matter of winning every single time for most, and it's a lot easier to get better in that kind of environment anyway, which can help ease the time commitment overall.

There are bigger tourneys, and some people have to travel a great distance for them, but even that usually turns into a weekend road trip with friends. When people travel to a major tournament, like EVO or Seasons's Beatings, or Quakecon, they spend a weekend in a different city, meet a bunch of new people, and talk a lot of trash. They also play games.

But travelling more than an hour or two is the kind of thing I wouldn't expect from most players, and most players don't travel to majors.

There's a couple of games I'm really good at; like, speedrun-level good. I suppose speedrunning would count as the singleplayer equivalent of competitive games, yes? Of course, they're completely different things, but speedrunning would seem to be an endeavour requiring very highly developed skills as well. So let's equate them for this post's sake.

Then, the answer is easy. I don't start being competitive and/or speedrunning because I don't care. I'm not a serious gamer, and gaming is just not important enough to me to be anything other than cheap entertainment. That's why I rarely play a single game more than once; if there's more to get, I usually watch it on Youtube or look for a Let's Play. It's not a time question. I just don't wanna.

I did not read every single response here, but since at one time in my life I did play some games competitively I would speak up. Two main reasons for me.

One would be community. I hate dicks and arrogant assholes and when you play competitively, you tend to run in to a lot of them. I prefer to have some fun with some good competition, not trashtalk and be an asshole to each other all the time.

The really big reason though is time. And it also fits in to community. I am now older and have my own family. If you really want to be good and competitive in a game, then you really need to drop a lot of time on it. Once you have some real world responsibilities, this becomes a HUGE problem. I know the OP is trying to say that you don't have to do that, but the fact is, if you want to be good, then you need to be able to drop a lot of time in to the game.

And when you don't have time to drop, then the community tends to give you a big fuck off as well. Since you can't go out there and play with the elite people every night for 6+ hours, they cut you out. Then when you find a good group of players that only play a few times a week, you join up for some comp and get creamed by the elites. Then you have to listen to everyone talk about how much you sucked and how bad they kicked your ass. Kind of ruins the fun factor and the casual, fun competitive group falls apart.

I could go further, but time and community are the big reasons why a lot of people don't play competitively. Even in your little local community tourneys (which my town/area tends to have very little of), a lot of people don't want to make the drive or anything because they know that they have fun with friends and are competitive with friends, but don't want to get their ass handed to them by some 15 year old lifeless punk who's gonna shit talk you the whole time.

Time (mainly due to other obligations that are more important than games) is the only real reason for me. It was okay in high school and the first year or two of college to dump lots of time into getting better at Natural Selection and TF2. As I head to grad school I barely have time to even play games for fun, let alone to make progress in them.

Competitive communities are usually annoying in some way or another, but I never found them so terrible to the point that I didn't want to be involved in them.

I think I'm pretty good at Halo 3, TF 2, SC 4 and all that, but public servers aren't really where people look for potential team-mates. You can kill ten guys on TF 2 as a Sniper and you don't hear praise and offers to play together some time- you get people who are somewhat pissed that you did well, and they think anyone else who beats them is OBVIOUSLY cheating, even though they were the ones up in midair with four Lv. 3 sentries right outside your spawn in fifteen seconds.

Unfortunately, the stupid people seemed to outnumber the actually awesome people, so I put it up for a while. My least favorite people were the disconnectors- you know, game's going well, you're about to win, then they all leave or shut down the server and send a message like "sorry, gotta go" or "lol doesn't count, we only quit cause you cheat, losers (ten line long blast of profanity and insults)"

Even when I played H3 with a pick-up group, if you didn't have an absolutely great K/D ratio, you'd hear grumbling about "who has to take the fucking scrub" and "why are we letting this guy play with us, he sucks!" Even in communities where "Oh, we'll help you get better!" is one of the values they hold forth, they rarely mean what they say.

Besides, it's hard practiciing when you get on a team of mouthbreathers who are all either fighting themselves for the sniper/shotty/hammer/sword or drooling over the fact they found a girl on a public server, and I'll just have to quit and invite her to a group so I can help screen the asshats; or they'll mock you for not using exploits.

So, since pubs are full of imbeciles and no one wants me in a private gane, I don't feel like getting better in the end, and I go put on Sonic or Mario Kart and blow off steam with that.

I'm going to echo a lot of the same statements here (time, other players) with a few variations.
One of my friends used to play competatively for R6:V (maybe V2) and they could be called bush league as best. But it seems similar to baseball bush leaguers as well; not a whole lot of fanfare, not entirely serious, playing more for the love of the game.

And back in the service I ran a few tournaments for Halo 2 as well back in the Navy while underway. Best story I have for that though was getting a mouth breather to drop out of the contest. It was a team-based tourney with team-based objectives. This guy was very VERY vocal about it being shit because there was no Team Slayer. Before the tournament details were finalized he also commented that he just needed 3 warm bodies because he was going to just carry his team anyway (usually our tournaments were Team Slayer with maybe a round of CTF thrown in). So me and the other coordinator relented and gave him his Team Slayer match. With a twist, the Team score was lowest team member's score. He bitched and complained about why were we still playing when he had 50+ kills (he had like 40+ but the other guys only had like 6 or less) but had such a low score meanwhile my team (of which I was probably the best player, and I wasn't that good) was communicating and working with each other to get the guy with the lowest score (and skill) the kills.

Though I do miss it some times. I did have a great team of players that I played a whole lot of FPSs with on a regular basis while I was stationed overseas. It also didn't hurt that we lived together and were on the security response team together as well. We're still in contact but we don't play a whole lot anymore since one's in Japan and the others are currently deployed.

The community thing isn't just reflective of video games, either. It's anytime money is involved, no matter how little. There are guys that are jerks when we play poker for nickel ante, and there are guys in the NFL and NBA that are notorious for blindside hits (Heinz Ward) and being cheaters (John Stockton). Even if you don't see those guys every day, if you're playing competitively, or playing any game with a money prize, you will be exposed to jerks squeezing every edge for the win, and I totally see how that kills it for some people.

Dropping Loads on July 2010

Sceptre: Penny Arcade, where you get starcraft AND marriage advice.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.

I did not read every single response here, but since at one time in my life I did play some games competitively I would speak up. Two main reasons for me.

One would be community. I hate dicks and arrogant assholes and when you play competitively, you tend to run in to a lot of them. I prefer to have some fun with some good competition, not trashtalk and be an asshole to each other all the time.

The really big reason though is time. And it also fits in to community. I am now older and have my own family. If you really want to be good and competitive in a game, then you really need to drop a lot of time on it. Once you have some real world responsibilities, this becomes a HUGE problem. I know the OP is trying to say that you don't have to do that, but the fact is, if you want to be good, then you need to be able to drop a lot of time in to the game.

And when you don't have time to drop, then the community tends to give you a big fuck off as well. Since you can't go out there and play with the elite people every night for 6+ hours, they cut you out. Then when you find a good group of players that only play a few times a week, you join up for some comp and get creamed by the elites. Then you have to listen to everyone talk about how much you sucked and how bad they kicked your ass. Kind of ruins the fun factor and the casual, fun competitive group falls apart.

I could go further, but time and community are the big reasons why a lot of people don't play competitively. Even in your little local community tourneys (which my town/area tends to have very little of), a lot of people don't want to make the drive or anything because they know that they have fun with friends and are competitive with friends, but don't want to get their ass handed to them by some 15 year old lifeless punk who's gonna shit talk you the whole time.

I've been a little disingenuous when it comes to certain games, yes.

It's true that there is a large time commitment for some games. It's a front-loaded, though, so sometimes I overlook it. Either a player has built up a base of skills when they were younger, or they haven't. Getting up to a certain level takes time, but maintaining that level takes less effort. Breaking into the next level also takes time, and I can see why a lot of people wouldn't want to do that. Most people who become competitive don't last in a fast-moving scene, because it's easy to take a bit of time off and get left behind by the metagame. Eventually most players find a period where they're spending too much time with the metagame, or catching up with new skills, and they don't really want to anymore, which is when they quit, or take a break.

I understand that perfectly.

But those are mostly communities that are small, or exclusive, enough that there's very little middle ground for players who want to play competitively, but not go all in.

If there was a stronger base of mid-level competitors then it wouldn't be a problem. Anyone who gets reasonably good could play with others, and those that wanted more could filter on up. This is where pickup or ranked leagues come in. But there has to be interest. They don't just appear out of the air.

When it comes to assholes, especially offline, there are far fewer than you'd think. The most abuse you'll get usually comes from a barely-good player who has a bigger mouth than everyone else around. If you actually get to know people then the majority are just fine.

When it comes to assholes, especially offline, there are far fewer than you'd think. The most abuse you'll get usually comes from a barely-good player who has a bigger mouth than everyone else around. If you actually get to know people then the majority are just fine.

I think the viewpoint isn't that there are "few" jerks, but rather that there are ANY. One is infinitely greater than zero, after all . That and when a jerk does make something unpleasant happen, it tends to stick in your memory a lot longer.

(edit: Okay that's not worded in a mathematically correct fashion but you know what I mean)

Dropping Loads on July 2010

Sceptre: Penny Arcade, where you get starcraft AND marriage advice.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.

I think the main thing for the people who could do it and choose not to is that it adds too much rigidity to their "fun time". When you just like to jump on and play when you get a spare hour or two, it's a lot less fun when it changes to "be on this server at 8pm on MWF or you can't play with us anymore" from "hop on a PA server any time from 7-12 and play with some chill dudes who are better than the average pubbie, but don't really take it seriously". So I guess that would be community.

The one thing that has always stopped me from bothering to play games competitively is the 'play 2 win' mentality breeds some incredibly obnoxious playstiles.

Having been blessed with a brother with similar interests, a similar age range, and similar gaming abilities, I'm always a phone call and a days wait at most away from some actual, competitive gaming, against someone who won't play like a sot just because he needs a few more battle points.

SSFIV is a great example of this, he and I played SFIV PC constantly, keyboard VS arcade stick, SSFIV came out, and I had to play the first week with a gamepad, and it was still fun, despite not being able to play for crap, because the metagame wasn't raging real hard yet. Two weeks later we got the keyboard adaptor working for the 360 (IBM model M keyboard BTW, a real classic) so we set out to play online, now tier lists and play 2 win are in full force.

Que - fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball, guess what I'm gonna do, fireball. Sonic boom, sonic boom sonic boom, flash kick, sonic boom, sonic boom, flash kick, headbutt, headbutt, headbutt, headbutt, headbutt, ZOMG PLAY 2 WIN. So at this point, we can play incredibly obnoxious people on the internet, or against one another, locally, where niether of us really cares enough about winning that we resort to being complete pricks.

We were both incredibly good at Smash brothers Melee also, but brawl came along, had internet play, and suddenly you have a bunch of people doing stuff they wouldn't really dare to do, were you sharing a couch and had a desire to actually play with people.

It's because I am crippled and in a wheelchair and can't easily get to places.

Thanks, Page, now I'm sad. Going to go cut myself, now .
******

.

That is my real reason, but speaking for what I think the normal reason is for the average person....

People don't like to lose, especially in a fighting or war type game. It's a very direct "You are beneath me" vibe in some games depending upon how a person loses.

People will blame obnoxious people or that it takes too much time to become good. The time element is actually valid.

The big reason, I still think though, is people don't want to compete if they don't think they have a chance and a lot of the tournaments have the rep for having elite skilled people even though the reality is a lot of them are just average.

The one thing that has always stopped me from bothering to play games competitively is the 'play 2 win' mentality breeds some incredibly obnoxious playstiles.

Having been blessed with a brother with similar interests, a similar age range, and similar gaming abilities, I'm always a phone call and a days wait at most away from some actual, competitive gaming, against someone who won't play like a sot just because he needs a few more battle points.

SSFIV is a great example of this, he and I played SFIV PC constantly, keyboard VS arcade stick, SSFIV came out, and I had to play the first week with a gamepad, and it was still fun, despite not being able to play for crap, because the metagame wasn't raging real hard yet. Two weeks later we got the keyboard adaptor working for the 360 (IBM model M keyboard BTW, a real classic) so we set out to play online, now tier lists and play 2 win are in full force.

Que - fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball, guess what I'm gonna do, fireball. Sonic boom, sonic boom sonic boom, flash kick, sonic boom, sonic boom, flash kick, headbutt, headbutt, headbutt, headbutt, headbutt, ZOMG PLAY 2 WIN. So at this point, we can play incredibly obnoxious people on the internet, or against one another, locally, where niether of us really cares enough about winning that we resort to being complete pricks.

We were both incredibly good at Smash brothers Melee also, but brawl came along, had internet play, and suddenly you have a bunch of people doing stuff they wouldn't really dare to do, were you sharing a couch and had a desire to actually play with people.

Guess I'd have to pick the 'community' option.

The gulf between can and cannot (or low to medium skill and high) in a game like Street Fighter IV is absolutely huge. The tactics you described are tricks used by medium to high level players to beat people without trying, or by complete newbs who have found one move that works and have no backup plan. There are ways around fireball spam, so many that it is not a feasible tactic at even moderate levels of play, but you don't know/can't do them at lower levels.

Trying to play in a tournament without knowing how to get around cheese tactics would be an exercise in frustration.

I understand why people who have no interest in playing competitively, or have no valid methods to do so, don't.

What I don't understand as well are people who play a game a lot, and might even get good at it, but don't take the next step and try playing more competitively. I don't play most of the games I play competitively, and I have no interest in doing so. Same goes for most other people who play any games in tournaments, but the ones that I enjoy enough to invest some effort into I will always scope out and see what I can get done.

But, if you've put 70 hours into learning a fighting game, what keeps you from going to a local tourney or gathering?

If you play an FPS or RTS a few times a week, half dozen or more hours total, and even watch matches and look up strategies, why don't you enter a small online tourney or league?

There are stigmas attached that I don't think are warranted. That, and without a good base of competitive players most games will die. There has to be a pool to draw from before tourneys and leagues can form.

Assholes, well yeah. There are more there than here, or here than there. I still think it's an issue that gets blown way out of proportion a lot of the time.

I've lived in a big city (Atlanta) for a few years now, and I've never even heard about any local tournaments. I suppose I could find some if I went to a game-specific community site and looked stuff up, but it's possible that a lot of people don't know these events are going on.

But you're going to run into assholes if you do anything with other people.

I would edit that to say "if you do anything with strangers" or "if you do anything with public groups" which is why some people choose to exclusively play games with people they are friends with. Going back to the football example, it doesn't bother me when people who root for the other team make fun of my team, but if it did, I'd just watch the game at home or go to a team-specific bar.

Dropping Loads on July 2010

Sceptre: Penny Arcade, where you get starcraft AND marriage advice.
3clipse: The key to any successful marriage is a good mid-game transition.